The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects: Volume 14

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-7183-3158-7
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 14, 250 Seiten

Reihe: The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects

Even in winter, Baarbadal is bustling! There are herds of wild baars looking for protection, wolves roaming the domain's edges, and a whole host of expecting mothers about to give birth to new pups, baars, and falconkin! The newly built maternity ward is all set up for things to run safely and smoothly. Unfortunately, a group of scheming forestkin decide to stir up trouble at the border, and they've got their sights set on Senai and Ayhan. The twins decide it's their responsibility to meet the threat head-on!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fuurou

Weitere Mitwirkende

Kinta

Lim, Hengtee

Leseproben

On the Road to the Mines—Dias

While Aymer, Mont, and the others had been in the Beastland Kingdom, we’d slain three flame dragons in Baarbadal. And while it was tempting to say that it was the cavekin’s ballistae that had done all the heavy lifting, their effectiveness was in large part thanks to the work of Senai and Ayhan.

The twins had used their own bows and arrows against the monsters, but they’d helped the cavekin aim their ballistae too. Apparently, the cavekin were skilled at everything about them...save for their aim. This made things hard, because flame dragons could weave through the sky with an almost unrivaled grace. Fortunately, when the twins and the cavekin combined their might, they were a force to be reckoned with.

The head-scratching part was that I’d always thought shooting arrows was completely different from firing a ballista. But to hear the twins tell it, they were pretty much the same. This left me pretty dang confused, so I asked Alna and Zorg if they felt the same way.

“Nope, the girls are just special,” said Alna. “Ballistae and bows are completely different weapons.”

“All an archer can bring to a ballista is their eyesight,” said Zorg. “I mean, maybe Alna taught the girls in a more comprehensive way or something, but there’s no way could do what they did.”

That made me think that maybe it was a forestkin thing—like maybe they were real skilled when it came to this stuff. But Zorg had seen the forestkin in Beastland territory, and he didn’t think they were worth even talking about. That simply meant that, in the end, the twins were just...special.

I was thinking about it all a lot, and that was when an unexpected voice jumped in.

“I think it’s how they’ve been brought up,” said Aruharu, a young Meowgen woman who was staying with us. “They’ve had a whole bunch of different teachers, and they’re free to interpret the lessons they’re taught however they like. It’s only natural that they’d develop in a way nobody ever imagined, right?”

Aruharu said that a wealth of teachers didn’t always mean extraordinary results, but sometimes things kind of came together in just the right way, and sometimes kids responded really well to having lots of different teachers. To help prove her point, Aruharu turned to the twins.

“Senai, Ayhan,” she said. “When you first learned to use a bow, do you remember what Alna taught you?”

We were all standing by the side of the road near the mines, near a well-worn ballista. There was a group of cavekin working on it, and their boisterous voices were the background to our conversation. Aruharu was dressed in a winter outfit that Alna and Ellie had hurriedly made for her, and the twins were rolling a snowball across the ground.

“Um,” Senai muttered, stopping to think for a second. “She taught us to read the wind!”

“Yeah, she said that to take aim, we have to look at the wind and find the flow,” said Ayhan.

“Huh... And how did you do that?” Aruharu continued. “How do you read the wind? Do you feel it on your skin, or maybe you use those long ears of yours?”

Everybody heard Aruharu’s question, and we all leaned in to hear the girls’ answers. We were out at the mines because Zorg and Mont hadn’t been able to see the ballistae in action while they were on expedition, but they really wanted to see them. All in all we had me, Alna, Zorg, Iberis, Mont, the twins, Aymer, and Aruharu.

“Uh, we look with our eyes,” replied Senai. “We can see the wind when we use magic.”

Ayhan added, “Yeah, we see it, and we picture where it’s going, and then we make a wish on the wind.”

This certainly wasn’t what Alna and Zorg were expecting. They stood there with their eyes so wide I thought they might roll straight out of their sockets. But Aruharu, she just nodded. Her expression said it all:

Still, she had another question she wanted to ask.

“When you have to aim at an animal that’s running away, what do you focus on?” Aruharu asked. “Who taught you how to hunt?”

“Um, Alna taught us,” said Senai, “but Dias’s style is easier—and way more fun!”

“Yeah, don’t think,” said Ayhan. “Just feel. It’s okay to miss; you just have to try your best and believe in yourself. But also we follow the flow of magic to see where the animals are going to move next. That’s when we shoot.”

“And it’s the same for monsters?”

“Yep!” replied Senai. “Whenever Dias fights he senses movement, and that’s how he dodges. We copy that.”

“Sometimes magic and miasma are a flow,” said Ayhan. “But sometimes they’re lumpy, and sometimes they’re pointy. We just follow their shapes.”

sure

What I’d learned through experience was that the more time I spent worrying in battle or on the hunt, the more openings I left. Because of that I just left everything to instinct. I never stopped moving—I was always attacking, dodging, or both. The twins had seen my approach, and over time they’d made it their own while adding some unique twists.

“Looks to me like you two were pretty bright from the get-go,” Aruharu praised, patting them both on the head, “and this environment here has had a huge impact on your potential. All the different races, all the different skills—it’s been the perfect melting pot for you to cook up your own tricks. I guess it helps that the adults here never boxed you in and forced you to do things any one particular way either. That they leave you to work things out for yourselves is a big part of your creativity. It makes the two of you who you are. You learn what people teach you, and then you put your own spin on things. It’s exactly what the empire was always aiming for.”

Aruharu crossed her arms and nodded to herself. She looked pretty satisfied with her conclusions. In fact, she saw zero need to talk about it any further and went to examine the ballista, which was just about ready for a test shot. The twins were quick to follow her.

The twins hadn’t known Aruharu long, but they saw how close she was with Aymer, and I guess that made her all the more approachable, because they’d hit it off quick. The twins liked Aruharu a lot, and clearly she liked them just as much.

Aruharu hailed from the empire, but unlike Mont, she intended to return home. With that in mind, some of the villagers wondered if it was a good idea to let her see the ballistae. Mont didn’t think it mattered.

“I say show her,” he’d told me. “Let her see for herself that we’ve got weapons that can shoot down flame dragons with the snap of our fingers. It’ll be a mighty good deterrent when she takes that news back home. Sometimes hiding things isn’t the answer, you see—sometimes you have to let people see what you’re made of.”

And with that, I decided it was fine to have Aruharu along for the ballista testing. That said, we marked a few places as off-limits to her—namely the border station buildings, the storehouses, the hut by our water source, and the storage cellars. Aruharu took it all in stride and didn’t seem to mind the restrictions—she was more interested in learning how we lived here in Iluk and spending time with the twins.

Aruharu had heard all the stories about me, and she came up clear on all the onikin soul appraisals. There wasn’t a hint of ill will to be found in the girl. She was more intrigued than anything—always asking about this or that or wanting to hear stories about the war. She seemed like good people as far as I was concerned.

“All righty then!” boomed one of the cavekin. “We’ll just set up the target and then we’re good to go!”

Another cavekin ran out into the snowy fields carrying an old, beat-up wooden box, then tossed it into place once he was far enough from the ballista and came running back. He was practically swimming through the snow on account of his short legs, and his beard was all white by the time he got back.

The cavekin quickly prepared the ballista, loaded it, and wound the bolt into place. Alna and Zorg imbued it with some magical energy, and from there it was good to go—the twins gave some directions to dial in the aim and got ready to give the command to shoot. Everybody who wasn’t part of the actual firing stepped away from the ballista, and then the twins shouted.

“Now!”

“Bolts away!”

One of the cavekin pulled on a lever to unleash the ballista’s loaded bolt, and a huge bang echoed out. We heard the sound of the bolt unleashing and the sound of it screaming through the air. It sounded way more powerful than the first time I’d seen one—the cavekin had clearly added a few upgrades since then.

In the time it took to blink after the bolt cut through the air, the whole area around the wooden box exploded into a cloud of white. There was no way to know if the ballista had hit its mark or not, but that didn’t stop the twins from crying out with glee.

“We did it!”

“Bang on target!”

They made it sound a lot like the shot had been a runaway success. After a while, the cloud of snow began to settle. As it did, the ballista’s big old bolt and the remnants of what had once...